Last week the major indexes turned lower again with the Nasdaq down 0.2%, the Dow and the NYSE composite each giving up 0.7%, and the S&P 500 slipping 0.4%. The IBD outlook remains at “market in correction”. It’s still not the right environment in which to be buying stocks.

This week, with the market in correction, there are no watch list stocks that can be considered to be in a proper buy range.

If any one person is the founder, it’s Rick Santelli. A year ago, the CNBC commentator blew a gasket on the air over a plan by the Obama Administration to tackle the foreclosure crisis. Multibillion-dollar proposals were flying like snowflakes in Washington, and Santelli’s rant struck a chord with people who wondered where all the money would come from. “We’re thinking of having a Chicago Tea Party,” Santelli declared, evoking the 1773 protest in Boston Harbor. A movement was born. Egged on by conservative interest groups and leveraging Barack Obama’s digital-networking strategies, grass-roots opponents of the President’s agenda have made themselves a major factor in U.S. politics.

We could understand Nancy Pelosi’s defense of Charlie Rangel this way. It’s an issue of conservation. I’ve heard those San Francisco liberals love the environment. Forget promises to “drain the swamp” during the 2006 campaign. She wants to conserve her ally’s job.

Don’t get Pelosi wrong. Surely, if a powerful House member “has proven himself to be ethically unfit” we know “the burden” indeed “falls upon” his party to oust him. In such a case, party leaders would obviously ask: “Do they want to remove the ethical cloud that hangs over the Capitol?”

So Pelosi explained in October 2004. The subject was Tom DeLay. The House ethics committee had admonished the Republican majority leader. DeLay used the Federal Aviation Administration to track Democratic state rivals. He hosted a fundraiser with energy lobbyists while energy legislation was under consideration.

Pelosi argued: “We must stop the influence of special interests so that the people know that we are here for the people’s interests.”

After all, this is why we have institutions like the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service. Except, that is, for the namesake and the center. An oil drilling company (special interest) made a $1 million donation to Rangel’s center. The quid pro quo, allegedly, included legislative favors. The matter, like so much of Rangel’s world, is under investigation.

Rangel has one of the powerful jobs in government. The New York Democrat is chairman of the House Ways and Means committee. The committee has jurisdiction over all taxation. And that’s the rub. Rangel has a problem paying all his taxes.

The chairman failed to report more than a half million dollars in income. He later amended his financial disclosure forms. Perhaps it was a senior moment. The public servant simply forgot about his New Jersey real estate and a quarter million dollar account.

But perhaps he’s just corrupt. There are other investigations. Possibly still more absent taxes, this time regarding rental income and a Dominican villa. There’s the four rent-stabilized Harlem apartments used by Rangel, reportedly, well below market value. House lawmakers cannot accept gifts worth more than $50.

Thank goodness for Pelosi’s past stands. Back in October 2004, the ethics committee had not yet acted on DeLay’s links to a more serious money laundering investigation. But Pelosi saw that as no excuse. The cloud was big enough. Action had to be taken on behalf of the “people’s interests.”

Certainly, Pelosi is not foolish enough to not apply a Democratic double standard. Well, you know how this story goes. In Washington, the cynics are rarely proven wrong.

Some Democratic lawmakers are calling for Rangel to step down. But not the House leader. She says slow down. Don’t jump to those conclusions. She told reporters Friday, “There’s obviously more to come and we’ll see what happens with that.”

A crime suspect who invokes his “right to remain silent” under the famous Miranda decision can be questioned again after 14 days, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday. And if he freely agrees to talk then, his incriminatory statements can be used against him.

In a 9-0 decision in a Maryland child-abuse case, the high court overturned a rule set in 1981 that barred the police from questioning a suspect once he had asked to remain silent and to speak with a lawyer.

Known as the “Edwards rule,” it was intended to prevent investigators from “badgering” a suspect who was held in jail after he had invoked his Miranda rights. In some cases, police had awakened a suspect in the middle of the night and asked him again to waive his rights and to admit to a crime.

In recent years, the rule has been understood to prevent police from ever requestioning a freed suspect, even for other crimes in other places. The justices said Wednesday that although the rule made sense for suspects who were held in jail, it did not make sense for suspects who had gone free.

“In a country that harbors a large number of repeat offenders, the consequence [of this no-further-questioning rule] is disastrous,” Justice Antonin Scalia said.

If there has been a “break in custody” and the suspect has gone free, Scalia said, the police should be allowed to speak with him after some period of time.

“It seems to us that period is 14 days,” he said. “That provides plenty of time for the suspect to get reacclimated to his normal life [and] to consult with friends and counsel.”

Then, if the suspect waives his rights and agrees to talk, any statement he makes can be used against him, the court said.

The ruling in Maryland vs. Shatzer reinstates a child-abuse conviction against a Maryland man who made incriminatory statements to a state investigator 2 1/2 years after he had first been questioned by police.

Hooray for the Supreme Court, and it was a unanimous decision no less! Good deal, Miranda could use a good pruning. Ever since the uber liberal Warren Court pulled the Miranda warning scheme out of thin air, criminals have had way too much of an advantage over law enforcement when it comes to questioning.

/seriously, if a criminal is too stupid to know that they don’t have to confess to the police, they deserve to go to prison anyway, just for being that dumb

The arrest of dozens of high-ranking military figures in Turkey over an alleged coup plan dating back seven years marks the latest episode of a power struggle between the Islamist-rooted government and the army, the bastion of the secular order, analysts said Tuesday.

In a massive swoop, anti-terror police Monday detained more than 40 people, including the former air force and navy chiefs, over a purported plan drawn up in 2003 to oust the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

Until recently, such tough action was inconceivable against the military which has toppled four governments in 50 years and exercised significant clout in politics.

But recent reforms to align the country with the European Union, spearheaded by the AKP government, has reduced the influence of the once-mighty military.

Monday’s arrests constitute a “breaking point” in Turkish political history, said the liberal Taraf daily which exposed the alleged coup plan code-named “Operation Sledgehammer” last month.

“The republic is now changing. The era of ‘dictatorships’ is coming to an end. The coup plotters are being arrested and brought to justice,” wrote the newspaper’s editor-in-chief Ahmet Altan.

According to Taraf, “Operation Sledgehammer” called for the bombing of two mosques in Istanbul at prayer time and organizing attacks by soldiers disguised as Islamists against symbols of secularism.

The coup planners also allegedly plotted to escalate tensions with Greece to secure the downing of a Turkish plane in a dog-fight with Greek jets over the Aegean with the ultimate aim of showing the government as inept and justifying a military takeover.

The army has denied the exisence of “Operation Sledgehammer” and complained of a “smear campaign” amid a string of similar plots for a military takeover carried by the pro-government media.

Dozens of former officers, among them two retired generals, are already on trial over the so-called Ergenekon network, an alleged secularist-nationalist group accused of planning to foment unrest to pave the way for a military coup.

The probe was initially hailed as a success, but has since come under doubt with some suspects accusing police of fabricating evidence.

Government critics claim the coup allegations are a bid by the AKP to cripple the army and remove a major obstacle to a hidden agenda of transforming Turkey into an Islamic state.

Hugh Pope, a senior analyst specialising on Turkey at the International Crisis Group, expressed doubt there was a “witch hunt” against the army.

“Clearly, the judiciary is extremely serious and they would certainly not have taken so many high-profile people into custody unless they had an absolute certainty in their mind that this is a real case,” he said.

Pope acknowledged there was “uncomfortable evidence” of abuses in the judicial process against the alleged coup plotters, but underlined the investigation also represented “a process by which Turkey is establishing the supremacy of civilian authority” over military power.

Alexandre Toumarkine, a political scientist from the French Institute of Anatolia Studies, said the possibility of some limited form of military intervention in EU-candidate Turkey in the 21st-century was not pure fiction.

“The image of tanks in the streets carries such a heavy political cost that such a hypothesis is probably unthinkable,” he said.

Nevertheless, plans of more discreet military intervention aimed at “restructuring the political system in depth” have “germinated in the minds of quite a few people,” he added.

“We have the impression that they have reached such a level (of antagonism) that the army either accepts to withdraw from the political area or continues to prepare the destabilization of the current government to compel it to leave the scene.”

The president has unveiled a reform plan of his own ahead of Thursday’s bipartisan summit. But it’s no better than the lousy Democratic proposals that Americans have already dismissed.

The Obama plan appears to be based on the bills that were passed last year in the House and in the pre-Scott Brown Senate. While it leaves out the public option that was included in the House legislation, it adds a wrinkle that’s just as harmful: price controls on insurance premiums.

Americans aren’t going to want this rancid stew of legislative arrogance any more than they wanted the bills that were rammed through Congress. Our own polling shows that 34% strongly oppose Congress’ overhaul plans while only 24% strongly support.

When the “strongly oppose” and “somewhat oppose” responses are combined, the poll shows 45% are against the Democrats’ proposals. Independents oppose the plans 51% to 34%.

While the administration’s proposal might get some initial support because it regulates insurance costs, the public will recognize the rest of the plan as something it’s seen and rejected.

It seems the White House is cynically using the new wrinkle to take advantage of the anger toward insurance companies. The good news is that wrinkle should smooth out once opponents explain why restrictions on premium increases will leave the public with less coverage, as insurers will have no choice but to ration benefits.

The opponents — hopefully every Republican holding elected office — could start by repeatedly pointing out that Larry Summers, President Obama’s chief economic adviser, not a GOP operative, said: “Price and exchange controls inevitably create harmful economic distortions. Both the distortions and the economic damage get worse with time.”

The opposition should also ceaselessly tell the public that the ultimate consequence of premium caps on health insurance — if not the ultimate goal of the Democrats — is the collapse of the industry.

Private firms will leave the market when government restrictions make it unreasonably hard to make a profit. That will happen when the caps are combined with the inevitable federal mandates outlining the wide array of conditions that insurers must pay for and the rules that govern how coverage is sold.

New York has bitter experience with coverage rules. Since the early 1990s the state has forced insurers to provide insurance to people who are already sick and required them to set premiums at the same rate for all customers despite differences in age and health.

New York’s market hasn’t yet crumbled, but only because insurers have been able to increase premiums. New York now has, at roughly $9,000 a year on average, the highest rates in the country.

Soaring premiums can’t happen in a regime in which they are capped. When caps are added to mandates, insurers have nowhere to go but out of the health insurance business.

“We are sort of a case study of what not do,” says Mark Scherzer, identified in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times as “a consumer attorney who helped lead the fight for New York’s changes in the early 1990s.”

We see nothing in the Obama proposal that makes it more acceptable than what the Democrats have already put up.

• It won’t cut costs. Its $950 billion price tag for 10 years is even higher than the federal estimates, which were insanely optimistic, for the bills that have already been passed.

• It won’t insure all the uninsured. The White House says it will cover 31 million Americans who are without coverage. That still leaves as many as 15 million or 16 million without medical insurance.

• It won’t increase Americans’ control of their health care. It will require people to buy insurance and force businesses that don’t insure their employees to provide coverage. That’s more government.

• It’s not what the people want. By more than a 2-1 margin, our IBD/TIPP poll found, Americans want Congress to start fresh with a new blueprint, not rehash what they’ve clearly rejected.

No amount of we-know-what’s-best, force-it-on-an-unwilling-public arrogance can change these facts. Yet the Democrat machine, confident its ideas are so strong that they can repeal the laws of economics, refuses to end its offensive against the people.

We are far beyond the point at which we can admire their tenacity while disagreeing with their solutions.

What we need is a clean, quick kill of a plan — an Obama course that would drive our health care system into an abyss from which it would never escape.

What happened to Obama’s promise to focus on American’s top priority, jobs? Apparently, that lasted all of about a week and now it’s back to socialized health care reform, a plan already soundly rejected by the vast majority of the American public.

/Obama and the Democrats must have an insatiable political death wish, they’re going to get absolutely creamed in the 2010 midterm elections